My group at school is doing a senior design project and we planned to build an object tracking flying robot. We were going to build a quadcopter and use the arduino board with aeroquad software to fly. Next we were going to mount an android cellphone to the quadcopter and stream video to our laptop using an application. After that we planned to use Matlab to process the video and track an object color, like a red ball.

So cell phone would see the object and the change of position it would stream it to a laptop with matlab through wifi (which we have gotten to work so far), matlab would location the position, and here is where we have to send the information to the arduino so it can tell the robot to move accordingly (which is where i'm stuck).

I know you can communication with your arduino and matlab through usb but could it be done wirelessly and still work properly? any other problems you think I may run into?

I know you can communication with your arduino and matlab through usb but could it be done wirelessly and still work properly?

The bits being streamed back and forth don't care if there is a wire carrying them, or not.

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any other problems you think I may run into?

Tons of them. The key is to anticipate as many as possible, and to deal with all of them. Do not wait until the last minute for any part of the project. If you have a problem, either deal with it now, or revise the scope of your project.

Just getting a quadcopter flying straight and level, and be able to control it from the ground is a big project. Making it actually perform some useful task is over the top.